This invention relates to a music sheet and more particularly a rectangular music sheet for selective use with an electronic music producing device.
A conventional music sheet generally includes one or more sheets written or printed with music, various recommendations regarding a tone color, an effect, an accompaniment, etc. which are necessary for the performance of the music, and a text. As is well known, however, such a music sheet cannot be performed correctly without a certain degree of musical knowledge and technique of performance.
The recent development of electro-technique has been applied to the field of musical instruments. Many types of inexpensive and compact electronic musical instruments have been proposed having keyboards and tone producing means capable of manually selecting a tone color and an effect in accordance with the operator's desire, these musical instruments additionally being capable of performing an accompaniment. Further, it has been desired to provide an electronic musical instrument and software therefor with which anyone can readily perform or practice at any place.
To meet this requirement, an electronic musical instrument has been developed in which a musical composition, a tone color effect and an accompaniment, etc. are converted into bar codes consisting of pitch data, length data and chord data, and in which the bar codes are incorporated into a musical sheet. The bar codes are read out with an optical sensor, then stored in an electronic musical instrument and the musical composition is automatically performed according to the stored information. Alternatively, an operator can perform the music by a single key operation as if the performer is playing a musical instrument.
This type of electronic musical instrument may be said to be a revolutionary one because even an inexperienced performer can readily perform it automatically. However, since the bar codes occupy a substantial area of a music sheet, prior art sheet music using these codes have the following disadvantages.
The bar codes are constitued such that a note or symbol is represented by a combination of a predetermined number of thick and thin bars and spacings therebetween so that, although a short musical composition does not present any serious problem, in the case of a long musical composition accommodation of many codes in a single sheet enlarges the size thereof, thus making it impossible to make the music sheet of a definite and uniform size.
Accordingly, when the size of the musical sheet is a predetermined small size the number of sheets may increase. This contradicts the desire of the operator who wishes to carry and perform a compact electronic musical instrument in any place.
Moreover, a beginner or a not yet skilled operator requires a considerable amount of time and training until he or she can understand how to obtain a tone color, an effect and an accompaniment appropriate for a specific musical piece that can be produced by such a musical instrument. Thus, it is difficult for the operator to use the musical instrument as he wishes and the operator is obliged to seek the instruction of a teacher or to buy a text book.